Mental Health & Diabetes in Youth - eLearning Course Development

There are 415 million adults (age 20-79) now living with diabetes worldwide and that pandemic continues to spread.

As of December 2015, the International Diabetes Federation estimate the number of children and youth living with Type 1 diabetes surpassed 500,000.

Type 2 diabetes continues to escalate among youth worldwide although no one is yet able to fully quantify that trend.

Obesity, diabetes and mental health disorders combine to create the 'perfect storm' for our youth. There are significant bi-directional relationships among and between these conditions.

The comorbidity of diabetes and mental disorders brings new challenges for health care providers with respect to:

* Recognition and interpretation of symptoms;

* Delivery of education to support achieving the goal of disease self-management for youth and their families;

* Preparation, implementation and maintenance of effective treatment plans and transition plans to assist youth and their families to move successfully from the paediatric to adult healthcare system.

The development of this course is a response by SFBLF to help mitigate a ‘knowledge gap’ identified at our 3rd annual Banting Legacy Transition Symposium in November 2014.

Experienced diabetes educators and health care providers in attendance were seeking additional knowledge regarding the comorbidity of diabetes and mental disorders and the resulting impact on processes for delivery of care for youth and emerging adults.

SFBLF initiated a validation survey in 2015 throughout our adjacent region in Ontario, Canada and the results were discussed with attendees at the 4th annual Symposium in November 2015. As a result, SFBLF committed to provide leadership for development of this course.

An international team of health care professionals, educators and medical experts has reviewed the learning objectives and the content of this course.

The course will be available worldwide as an audio-narrated, graphics supported, self-paced eLearning course.

The research and narrative text to support the identified leaning objectives are complete. The transformation process to an eLearning platform is in progress.